Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (00:08):
I'm Clarence Reynolds at MWC26. Telefónica is driving a massive shift to unified cloud-native infrastructure to power its next generation of services at global scale. Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Director for Core Transport and Service Platforms at Telefónica, and Paul Miller, CTO of Wind River, join us to discuss their partnership and the challenges of this transformation. Thank you both for being with us. Recent announcements from VMO2 and Telefónica highlight a major shift toward cloud-native architectures. How is that transformation being executed at scale? Cayetano?

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (00:44):
Well, in Telefónica, we are looking for the right infrastructure for our network core function and Telco Cloud is a key part of that. We are defining our ecosystem for that, and we want to have several partners for doing that. The key idea is to maximise the automation. So we need to have a very automated core with an industrialised solution that will allow us to implement the network function and take advantage of the agility and automation of the cloud nativeness of the function. For this reason, we have selected not only in the UK, but also in Brazil and in Spain, Wind River as one partner building this ecosystem for us.

Paul Miller, Wind River (01:29):
And we're really excited to be working with you, and in particular, your core network with the applications that we're bringing together there for the critical infrastructure that you operate. And of course, our automation and applications that we provide that help you deploy and automate your infrastructure. It's very exciting to see an operator with such a modern view of automation and how critical that is to driving such a high-scale environment.

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (01:52):
Yes. I think it has to be a partnership, and not only with Telefónica, but also with other vendors. I mean, the vendors providing the network function have to work in this automation and industrialisation. And we think that Wind River can help Telefónica in building this partner ecosystem for increasing the automation level.

Paul Miller, Wind River (02:09):
Yes. And for decades, we've been operating in the telco market and have great partnerships with all the key vendors that you're bringing into your network to operate on top of our cloud infrastructure. So really excited to work on that with you.

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (02:19):
Yes, let's do that.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (02:20):
What are the strategic advantages for Telefónica in deploying a unified telco cloud layer powered by cloud-native technology?

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (02:28):
Well, as said, the key factor for us is automation. I mean, when you have cloud technology, you can do many things in a different way. We can do in-service upgrade. That means that you can change the software or the network function without taking it out of service. And this allows you to change configuration of software in daytime and you do not have to wait for the maintenance window, for instance. Or you can do CI/CD, you can do automatic testing, and then deploy very easily the network functions. For this, you need a cloud infrastructure that interacts with the network functions easily. And this is the key factor. Automation is the key element for this partnership.

Paul Miller, Wind River (03:13):
Well, we discovered a similar thing where after years of deployment at high scale with multiple service providers, our CAS infrastructure, cloud-native infrastructure, and getting exposed to the operations day by day in your network, the real challenge is actually continuously deploying and keeping active and maintaining that infrastructure. And really in these new worlds with NFV and Open RAN and cloud-native core infrastructure, that's really only possible with a high level of automation. And so we introduced several years ago, a tool we call Conductor, which we're integrating with this deployment that enables him to do automated updates as he's describing and maintain that network, integrate the applications, lifecycle manage the environment, do modern DevOps CI/CD deployment of applications. So a very modern and innovative cloud-native approach to automation is really required to run a modern cloud today.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:02):
So what is the future roadmap for this collaboration between Telefónica and partners like Wind River in this evolving landscape?

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (04:10):
Well, I think we need to start implementing network function on top of Wind River, and we want to have many network functions on top of this CAS, increasing the capability we have, increasing the capability of automation that, as I said before, this is the key factor. So we are just starting, and let's collaborate with other partners for bringing this network function on top of this CAS.

Paul Miller, Wind River (04:35):
Yes. And we have deployments globally that individual customers run in tens of thousands of servers, server nodes in their cloud environment. So our ability to do that for you at very high scale and then support the integrations of the network functions on that environment, we're very excited about doing that, and we think we're going to have a great relationship.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (04:53):
Paul, in your experience, what are the biggest challenges and opportunities when executing large-scale cloud deployments in the telecom sector?

Paul Miller, Wind River (05:02):
Yeah. So I think we've reached a point in the technology evolution that it's a very well-proven and safe infrastructure that we're deploying in these cloud-native environments. So the technology is stable. What we're finding though is the skills of the personnel, the skills of our services people and the teams that we bring to the customer, as well as the skills within the customer environment are really critical to embrace more modern concepts like automation and cloud-native principles so that you can work with Kubernetes. You can work with Linux and operationally run these environments. And so an emphasis on the people and the skills and the experience is really important.

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (05:35):
I think to build on top of what Paul says, I think the key challenge is industrialisation with other partners, meaning the capabilities of the CAS provider, the CAS partner, to work with other partners with the network function partner and building the industrialisation, taking into account all the elements that you have to take into account for this industrialisation, I mean, that the process will run smoothly. This is a key challenge, in my opinion, cooperation with our company has to be very, very tight. In terms of opportunities, I think with this AI and in this mobile world progress, we have AI everywhere, but I think AI will increase even more the capabilities of automation and having the proper cloud-native approach will help us in implementing AI automation, increasing the level of autonomy of the network with this AI. So both we have a challenge. We have to increase partnership with other vendors, but also we have the opportunity to increase this autonomy level.

Paul Miller, Wind River (06:41):
And we're actually showing at our show this week, AI operations. So an agentic AI implementation that allows you to have a natural language interaction the way you would normally would with ChatGPT, but instead of interacting with a fixed engine like that, it's working through AI agents and interacting with the underlying systems. So we similarly share a view that modern automation and the key to operationally running these environments is going to be significantly enhanced by artificial intelligence.

Clarence Reynolds, TelecomTV (07:08):
Cayetano, Paul, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you.

Cayetano Carbajo Martín, Telefónica (07:11):
My pleasure. Thank you.